Showing posts with label xenophobia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label xenophobia. Show all posts

Monday, June 9, 2008

And now for color commentary we turn to Nazi apologist, Pat Buchanan



By now, most informed people know that Patrick Buchanan holds some pretty extreme views. Volumes of material (much of it penned by Buchanan; see citations below) attest to the fact that Buchanan is an anti-Semitic, racist, xenophobe and Nazi apologist. His most recent work,Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost the Empire and the West Lost the World,” has as its central thesis that had, we accommodated Hitler, as he sought to regain the lands “rightfully belonging to Germany,” or let him take Poland, we could have avoided the Second World War. Most reviewers of Buchanan’s opus have indulged in the “Great Man” machinations of Churchill, Hitler, Roosevelt and other leaders of the time, which goes something like this: had Churchill not been such a drunk he might have seen reason and not proclaimed victory at all costs. Absent from most such commentary, is the degradation of the Weimar Republic into a monstrous set of codes and laws that would eventually lead to the horrors of the Holocaust. Whatever accommodation may have been accorded to Hitler in his nation-grabbing, it cannot be gainsaid that the Nazis would have exacted a horrific human toll on the nations that they controlled (as they, in fact, did). God have mercy on the Jews, Gypsies, leftists, mentally ill, homosexuals, dissidents and the rest of the human species that the Nazis considered disposable detritus in the countries that the West ceded to Hitler. No amount of appeasement would have salved this savagery.



So the question that comes to my mind, and I wonder why it doesn’t to others’ minds, is why is this racist, neo-Nazi given so much real estate in the mainstream media? (Buchanan already hangs with the retrograde racists and nativists that inhabit the VDare website: a gathering place for extremist nutwings.) I will grant that Buchanan is possessed of a considerably keener intellect than fellow travelers, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs and the very mediocre, Glen Beck. (Although, these other nutwings are not pinch-hitting for Hitler.) But shouldn’t someone say, hey this Buchanan guy is way out of the mainstream, as in David Duke/Hal Turner territory, Holocaust denier terrain, and perhaps he should find an outlet that does not carry the imprimatur of Conventional Wisdom. He needs to crawl under the same rock that houses the KKK, the Order and the Aryan Brotherhood. We know that Fox News is merely a mouthpiece for Rupert Murdoch’s right wing views, so his appearances come as no surprise. But in spite of his well-documented history of extremist views, Buchanan is featured in such mainstream, even liberal outlets, as MSNBC and PBS’ the McLaughlin Report. No such accommodation is made for left-wing commentators such as Alexander Cockburn or Noam Chomsky. One can only conclude that left-wingers must use their own channels while extreme right-wingers are always welcome in the corporate media. Self-evident perhaps but frightful nonetheless.

Citations

Books by Buchanan

Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World by Patrick J. Buchanan (Hardcover - May 27, 2008).

Day of Reckoning: How Hubris, Ideology, and Greed Are Tearing America Apart by Patrick J. Buchanan (Hardcover - Nov 27, 2007).

The Great Betrayal: How American Sovereignty and Social Justice Are Being Sacrificed to.. by Patrick J. Buchanan (Hardcover - April 1, 1998).

State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America by Patrick J. Buchanan (Hardcover - Aug 22, 2006).

Conservative votes, liberal victories: Why the right has failed by Patrick J Buchanan (Hardcover - 1975).

Where the Right Went Wrong: How Neoconservatives Subverted the Reagan Revolution and Hijacked the Bush Presidency by Patrick J. Buchanan (Paperback - April 21, 2005).



Citations:



Anti-Defamation League: Pat Buchanan: In His Own Words

As an author, media figure, and political commentator, Patrick Buchanan publicly espouses racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Israel and anti-immigrant views. At one time an influential staff member in the Nixon and Reagan Administrations, Buchanan has gone on to write a number of books and articles that focus on the decline of Western civilization due to what he refers to as the “invasion” of non-European immigrants in the United States and Europe. His books, along with his weekly appearances on NBC’s The McLaughlin Group, have given him substantial mainstream exposure. Buchanan has affiliated himself with extremists in the United States and abroad, including deceased racist Sam Francis and the leaders of the Vlaams Belang, a xenophobic, racist political party in Belgium.

http://www.adl.org/special_reports/buchanan_own_words/buchanan_intro.asp

Pat Buchanan: Nazi Sympathizer*? , Posted by GayPatriotWest at 2:41 pm - May 22, 2008 ; Gay Patriot: the Internet home for the American gay conservative. http://www.gaypatriot.net/2008/05/22/pat-buchanan-nazi-sympathizer/

Pat Buchanan Is A Nazi Sympathizer, by @ 3:04 pm on May 20, 2008; Below the Beltway Blog. http://belowthebeltway.com/2008/05/20/pat-buchanan-is-a-nazi-sympathizer/.

“Anger on the Right: Pat Buchanan’s Venomous Crusade,” An ADL Special Research Report, Anti-Defamation League, 1991. http://www.adl.org/special_reports/pb_archive/pb_1991rpt.pdf



“Just Who and What is Patrick J. Buchanan?” by SJ Reidhead on Thu 10 Aug 2006 10:42 PM MDT, The Subway Canaries (a conservative blog). (many citations contained therein). http://subwaycanaries.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2006/8/10/2190994.html.



Pat Buchanan's Revisionist Fantasy,” Washington Post Review of “The Unnecessary War,” By Robert Dallek, Tuesday, October 19, 1999; Page A19. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPcap/1999-10/19/057r-101999-idx.html.



“Hawking Racism: Pat Buchanan's latest book is a white nationalist screed. But that hasn't stopped it from climbing the best-seller charts,” by Alexander Zaitchik, Southern Poverty Law Center HateWatch Intelligence Report, Winter 2006. http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=718



If you liked this post, don't forget to subscribe to my RSS feeds. Or you can

get my posts delivered to your inbox directly, by subscribing to my feeds by email.